About this blog…

I will be sharing here my experiences on migrating to Trados Studio 2009 from Trados 2007 — the good, the bad and the ugly…

Hopefully, this information will help you to discover new features and tricks that will improve your Trados Studio migration and translation experience. And for those of you who have not yet decided to upgrade, maybe this will help you to make up your mind… one way or the other.

How about coming to San Francisco in August? Looks like a great opportunity to meet translators and other language professionals around the world, hear some great presentations (such as Trados Studio: To Migrate or Not to Migrate), and see San Francisco. You can save some money by registering by June 30th (extended deadline). This is what the official promo says:

The FIT XIX World Congress, being held in San Francisco, California, August 1-4, 2011, allows your members to join their fellow translators and interpreters to discuss topical issues effecting language professionals today. With its unique focus on international and intercultural translation and interpreting, this event provides an opportunity for language professionals to share, learn, and connect with colleagues from all over the world. The FIT XIX World Congress offers:

Over 100 educational sessions in a variety of categories with unusual diversity and depth.

Speakers from all corners of the globe including China, Croatia, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, and so many more.

Special events and activities allowing opportunities to network, mingle, and socialize in a city as culturally diverse as this event’s attendees.

Continuing Education Points: ATA-Certified Translators can earn one point for each hour attended, up to a maximum of 10 points.

I wanted to mention two things that came up while I was in Boulder last weekend before I forget them. First of all, somebody asked me whether it’s possible to translate Wordfast TXML files in Studio. I had checked into this when I started using Studio over a year ago and at that time nobody seemed to know. However, I vaguely remembered that I had seen something about this somewhere later on and managed to find it on the SDL blog. There’s a good article by Paul Filkin on how this can be done. Basically, you need to define a file type settings for TXML files. Paul’s example shows how this can be done with some common tags (non-translatable content). The same method can be used for other tags as well, as needed. I haven’t tried it myself, since none of my clients use Wordfast, but it certainly looks doable. You can find the instructions here.

The other was the presentation by Riccardo Schiaffino and Margherita De Togni “Trados 2007 and SDL Trados 2009: Warts and all” about some of the shortcomings of Trados 2007 and whether those issues have been fixed in Studio. Good reading for those who still wonder whether they should upgrade or not. One thing that Riccardo seemed to dislike quite a lot are the poor fuzzy match algorithms used in Trados. I have to say that I agree. And if anything, it’s even worse in Studio. In some of my earlier postings, I have examples of this, and Riccardo has some examples on his blog. I actually take a screen shot every time I see a really funky and weird fuzzy match result. It would make a good photo exhibition by now.

Another issue that seems to create some confusion among Studio users are the various ways that other file formats can be used to create TM content in Studio. I had prepared an additional handout on this for last Sunday’s workshops in Boulder, so I thought to share it here as well. By the way, just to brag a little, both workshops were sold out and the participants seemed to be very happy with Studio. I have also noticed a clear increase in training requests by individual translators and translation companies. So it looks like the migration is picking up some speed…

Anyhow, here’s the info about upgrading TMs and importing files to existing TMs. You can also download the actual handout (incl. the pretty picture) from here in PDF format (new version, updated on May 18).

In addition to the normal interactive translation, Trados Studio memory content can be created from existing translation memories and from certain bilingual files. The method used (upgrading a TM or importing) depends on the source file and whether a new or existing Studio TM will be used.

Home view: Upgrade Translation Memories
– OR –
TM view: Tools > Upgrade Translation MemoriesWith the upgrade function you can merge several SDLTM memories (and other compatible file types) into one or several new Studio TMs.
In addition, an individual TM can be easily copied (and renamed) outside Studio (in Windows Explorer) to create a new matching TM.

2. Bilingual documents as the source

Source tool

File type

Command in Studio

Trados StudioTrados 2007SDLX

SDLXLIFFTTX (TagEditor)ITD

TM view: File > Import

NOTE: Content imported from bilingual documents will also include Context Match data, so it’s advantageous to use them as the source.

I’m often asked about how to do a word count analysis in Studio. It’s not surprising because the feature stays somewhat hidden if one translates without creating projects. When using the previous versions of Trados, I used to run the analysis more or less automatically for every job because it was so easy to do. However, in Studio it’s a bit more complicated and I’ve noticed that I don’t do it nearly as often (if I don’t create a project). So here’s a summary on how the analysis is done in Studio for those who might still be wondering about it.

1. When creating a project: This is easy and automatic. You get a full word count and analysis statistics report if you include the “Analyze Files” batch task in a task sequence (such as Prepare [with or without project TM]) when creating a project. The results can be viewed in the Reports and Files views. If you only want the analysis results you can select the Analyze Only task sequence instead of Prepare but you still need to go through the whole process of project creation. This might save some time since the files will not be pre-translated as they would if you used Prepare.

2. When translating a single file: This is when it gets a bit more complicated. Since no project batch tasks are run, you need to run the analysis task separately. Open the file for translation in the editor and save it in SDLXLIFF format (File > Save), if not done already. Open the Files (or Projects) view. Right-click the file (or project) name and select Batch Tasks > Analyze Files. Note that the batch tasks are grayed out if you haven’t saved the file in SDLXLIFF format first. Click Finish in the BatchProcessing dialog box to start the analysis. This will give you the full analysis statistics without having to go through the actual project creation process. The results can be viewed in the Reports and Files views. Another option would be to create a project but to select the Analyze Only task sequence, as described above (#1).

By the way, don’t expect to get the same word count results with Studio as compared to Trados 2007. I haven’t had the patience (or time) to figure out the reasons for that but I’d be interested in hearing from others who might have looked into this in more detail. Anyhow, this offers a great opportunity to test your negotiation skills with clients who use the other version.

UPDATE: You can find a new article about the word count differences here.